Monthly Archives: May 2014

It’s not too early to talk about the U.S. 2016 Presidential Election. Most everyone else is, so I will too.

Back in September, 2011, I wrote a generally optimistic post on the role of race in the approaching election. While race was a factor in the near unanimous black turnout for the President, it was little apparent in the course of the campaign.

2016 will be different.

I don’t like commenting on race.

This is not because I am a coward, as Attorney General Holder so designated his fellow citizens in 2009 for not openly discussing race; something the Obama administration has never ceased doing.

Rather, I find it depressing, and even distressing that so many years after the great struggles of the Civil Rights Era, the issue should still exist at all, let alone have become as prominent as it has since the ascendance of President Obama.

He sees everything through the prism of race, as does his wife, and they are not shy about encouraging others to do the same. The President of course, has no inheritance from those Africans brought to the Americas in bondage, whose descendants constitute the majority of Black Americans, but by virtue of his pigmentation may lay claim to that sad, and, proud, history.

Racists seeing an African looking man will not stop to question his ancestry, but Mr. Obama has no history of having been harassed or held back for his color. Rather, in his autobiographical composition, “Dreams of My Father” his palpable resentment is based on what he imagines to be in the minds of others. The President’s time is winding down, and one would hope that the racially charged atmosphere he has fostered would also decline following his exit, but I think not.

Race will, I believe, be central to 2016. How can it, one might ask, without Mr. Obama on the ticket? All the signs are here. Social and broadcast media reverberate unceasingly with the racial outrage du jour. The 2012 coalition of blacks, Hispanics, Asians, young people, singe college educated women, union members, Gays, environmentalists, and other odds and ends I mayhave forgotten, is fragile and its segments have little in common. Turning out the 90plus per cent black Democrat vote will be critical.

There will be another black person on the Democrat ticket, perhaps heading it. The President may endorse Hillary Clinton but will damn her with faint praise. The fever pitch of racial hysteria seen in a seamless line up of “racist scandals,” such as remarks by Donald Sterling and Mark Cuban ,the asinine tweets of MSNBC’s Toure, and renewed rumblings on reparations for slavery and Jim Crow serve as efforts not only to excuse the President’s sorry record, but to push a zeitgeist where American racists hide everywhere in plain sight, and those who don’t care to join the hunt are best advised to lie low. America must then once again prove its bona fides by electing a black chief executive.

Mrs. Clinton is weakening. Benghazi continues to drip away and the high decibel deflecting by Democrats shows that it is beginning to tell. Republicans can be relied on the fudge the most perfect opportunities to do in an opponent, but this story is finally developing tiny legs of its own. The State Department’s failure on her watch to tag Boko Haram as terrorist, has been noted, Libya is in turmoil, and the Russian reset is a joke. The former First Lady herself cannot name her accomplishments. Foreign policy, as we saw in 2012, isn’t a big deal, especially when the Republicans are so timid and have sins of their own. The problem for Hillary, however, is that foreign policy is all she has, and her work there is best forgotten.

Mrs. Clinton on the campaign trail, 2007 in New Hampshire. Over 60, the wrinkles accelerate. I know.

And, she looks terrible.

This speaks both to Ms Warren’s age, which after Reagan and McCain, is fair game – and her tenuous 1/32 (Not really) Native American ancestry.

So who does this leave? Elizabeth Warren? Her media supporters managed to keep the “Fauxcahontas” story from getting much further than Massachusetts, and Massachusetts is, after all, Massachusetts, but putting aside her extreme redistributionist ideas, she could not survive the mockery nationally.

Both Clinton and Warren are old.

And where did Barrack Hussein Obama come from anyway, other than left field? There is no reason someone could not challenge inevitable Hillary, and it is far from a foregone conclusion that she will run at all. My front runners are Corr Booker and Deval Patrick.

Mr. Patrick, in his second term as governor of Massachusetts, has stated he will not seek reelection. Like the President, he graduated from Harvard Law School. The black population of the State is around 7.9%, well below the national average of 13.1%, which indicates his viability with a largely white electorate. The governor has said he will not be a candidate 2016, but things change. Black, or any color or ethnicity, Patrick is a reasonable candidate.

Cory Booker, former Mayor of Newark, where he was famed for superman-like exploits, even rescuing someone from a burning building, is only in his first term as junior Senator from New Jersey, but not fulfilling a first term wasn’t in the end held against President Obama. Now that we’ve elected a first term senator, and as conservatives swoon for first-termers Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, Booker can’t be faulted for inexperience. .

Thus, there are two black men who can meet both the Party’s and the President’s needs. Obama identifies as black, but he cares nothing for black people. There hasn’t been so much as a Beer Summit to address persistently higher unemployment among blacks compared to the general population. The Selfie- in-Chief loves only himself. So why would he care much who came after? The President dislikes white people as a class. He has no reason to, as they have always done well by him, but he doesn’t need one. While he has the lack of self awareness of a narcissistic sociopath, he is not entirely divorced from reality, and is, I think, driven to rage when he contemplates his in-authenticity. His narcissism means he doesn’t really care who succeeds him, but since he can’t succeed himself, he’d prefer someone black, who would, in that respect, mirror him. He would rather a black run, and lose, than he be followed by a white.

Thus, I am convinced that the next Democrat national ticket will have a black person, on it, and quite possible at its head. The only question is which one. I’ve mentioned two, but there is always the wild card.

Indeed, Mrs Obama has had a worldwide impact. This photo is from a daily in Tabasco, Mexico.

When you’ve stopped laughing consider how many have wished that Mr. Obama could have a third term, and have called for an end to the 22nd amendment.

Impossible, you say? In a nation with persistent joblessness and endemic underemployment, inner city war zones, humiliations abroad, the focus as I write on social media is on the Kim and Kanye wedding. Mr. Obama has been called by many the “Kardashian” president, but Michelle would be the true Kardashian candidate, without any experience or accomplishment, her being who she is qualification enough. Her campaign might dip into the TMZ stable for media management. The First Lady has long been a prominent figure on our electronic agora, that is to say The View and late night talk shows. Now, she’s getting involved in political matters. Pre-positioning?

This possibility is not at all outlandish in a nation where a large portion of the political class and the electorate that follows them, find something profound in this:

Mr. Obama’s successful campaigns have demolished any lingering idea of a necessity for qualifications, and the dynastic aspect of a wife succeeding a husband is not troubling at all to substantial numbers of voters. Consider that the term ”Clinton Restoration,” with its echoes of the Stuarts, is used quite seriously. Kennedy worship has never ceased, despite succeeding generations have shown the intelligence and talent of the latter Hapsburgs, the longest serving of them so far that murderous free diving Falstaff from Massachusetts who, after decades in the Senate reached apotheosis as the ”Lion of the Senate” before his final departure. Two Bushes, and talk of another. Pop and Kid Paul. , and . If you like Ben Carson, why shouldn’t someone like Michelle?

Then there is the gormless mania for British Royalty when they marry, give birth, or travel across the water to show us their funny hats. Perhaps we do want a king, and in the post feminist era, why not a queen? Why shouldn’t Michelle be a black Lurleen Wallace? And she could be far more than that. The infantilized electorate is ready for a Populist Madonna a la Eva Peron. Mrs. Obama has spent a great deal of time telling us to eat our vegetables. From First Lady to First Mother of the Nation is a logical step.

Historic first black president followed by historic first black female president. Rather than being seen as absurdity, this would be celebrated. Oppose it, and you are not only racist, but sexist. Talk about twofers!

“College Wins US Debate Championship By Repeating the N-Word Over and Over, Speaking Incomprehensibly”

This particular bit of progressive nonsense was brought to my attention by WeaselZipppers, a right blog that can be counted on to put forth the most egregious outrages of Progressives, Leftists, Democrats, Islam, and the Obama administration
I enjoy agenda sites, but check things out. Here, Zippers links to a site called Pundit Press, which has further links to an Atlantic story with this headline and sub header:

Hacking Traditional College Debate’s White-Privilege Problem

“Minority participants aren’t just debating resolutions—they’re challenging the terms of the debate itself.”

Speaking truth to power or something.

The Tyson winners

“On March 24, 2014 at the Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA) Championships at Indiana University, two Towson University students, Ameena Ruffin and Korey Johnson, became the first African-American women to win a national college debate tournament, for which the resolution asked whether the U.S. president’s war powers should be restricted. Rather than address the resolution straight on, Ruffin and Johnson, along with other teams of African-Americans, attacked its premise. The more pressing issue, they argued, is how the U.S. government is at war with poor black communities.”

.

It appears that the Atlantic writer has no experience in debate, or training in rhetoric. “Premise” Is defined as “a previous statement or proposition from which another is inferred or follows as a conclusion.”

No conclusions or inferences were made. The Towson students simply changed the subject. The proceedings then went in an unusual direction:

“Over four hours, the two teams engaged in a heated discussion of concepts like “nigga authenticity” and performed hip-hop and spoken-word poetry in the traditional timed format. At one point during Lee’s rebuttal, the clock ran out but he refused to yield the floor. “Fuck the time!””

“Fuck the time!”

I rather like that. Good song title or t-shirt meme.

The Atlantic is somewhat reticent in describing the flavor of the debaters’ language and thrust of their rhetoric. Pundit Press is more forthcoming and offers some transcription. The transcription is accurate as far as it would be possible to transcribe this kind of speech, if such it is. (A short video link here, and the entire session, here)

“Uh, man’s sole “jabringing” object disfigure religion trauma and nubs, uh, the, inside the trauma of representation that turns into the black child devouring and identifying with the stories and into the white culture brought up, uh, de de de de de, dink, and add subjectively like a white man, the black man!”

I’m stumped by “jabringing” as the only search result leads back to this article.

A “ jabring” is apparently a breed of cat and maybe a word in Swedish.

And this:

“When the n*****, uh, sees these pains and suffering that he can only, uh, envision himself that he, uh, does not see another n***** that he, uh, can feel sympathy for or embrace, but rather, uh, that, a-bluh, that that otherness gets obliterated.”

I thought I could follow this, but came up short. ”Otherness” is bad,we’re often told, so the speaker should be happy that it is obliterated, but the tone indicates otherwise. Perhaps an undigested bit of Edward Said in an otherwise unidentifiable spew. The passage is not coherent enough to be termed a rant.

As one would expect, comments express outrage at falling, or non-existent standards, ghetto trash talk and the Third Worldization of America,

As for me, I’m not so hard on these kids.

I get what they are doing. I was a high school debater, eventually captain of the team.

And I was crap.

We had intramural debates, and those we called “Oxford Style” full on snark, sarcasm, vilification of opponents, a lot of humorous nastiness, with the audience awarding victory. I did quite well at those. It was basically verbal bullying, elevated above the playground variety by elegant terms of phrase, but just as vicious.

Interscholastic debating, under the aegis of the association to which we belonged, went on throughout the year on a single topic. A thick briefing book was issued and participants were enjoined to learn the basics, and go on to their own research.

Me getting my ass handed to me at a regional debate, University of New Hampshire, 1965

I never did because I was bone idle, and my crew was a similar bunch of no accounts, whom I made no effort to whip into shape. So, while we often got high marks for delivery, we were marked down for everything else.

Now, we had well developed vocabularies and rhetorical technique, and even some degree of oracular artistry, but our basic skill was the same as that deployed by these Towson kids:

Bullshit

The difference was, of course, that we were not rewarded for it. Not only did we bring home no trophies, but the headmaster made sure I was left out of the yearbook picture.

Some comments express concern for the debaters, in that these synthetic accolades set them up for failure in later life. I’m not so sure in their particular cases. The articles give no information on their fields of study, but even if their degrees are insubstantial, their notoriety should help, and I expect places will be found for hem in government, NGOs, or even progressively oriented corporations.

One has to remember that these young people are outstanding in their milieu. Those who are not, but whose education reflects the same kind of standard, will not have much to recommend them. This is one more example of the endless bigotry of low expectations, and the accommodation, and even celebration, of a culture that does not respect learning. Any who aspire to emulate the Towson debaters may have gone to college, but they are in the same trap as are others who eschew schooling to become rappers or athletes.

Not everyone can; most cannot.

The Atlantic quotes academics finding nothing wrong in all this, and who, indeed, celebrate it. These are the real villains of the piece. They have their tenure, but those schooled under their ideas will be lucky to have any kind of job.

In the end, these kids are right. There are white people keeping them down,

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